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He Built a Cycling Brand He Didn't Want to Grow — and Still Won't Put a Logo on It

Matt Quann

Matt Quann is the founder of Ornot, a cycling apparel brand based in San Francisco. A lifelong bike racer and a working graphic and motion designer, he started Ornot as a personal cycling project — planning it in 2012 and launching in 2013 with a video, a site, and a small run of clothing. He never set out to build a clothing company; he set out to make the things he wanted to wear. Rather than take the easy path of a full-package factory overseas, he spent years tracking down a pattern maker, a cut-and-sew facility, and a fabric mill in the Bay Area so Ornot could be made in the USA — the harder, more unique route, on purpose.

Coming up on thirteen years and still just eight or nine people, Ornot runs out of a San Francisco office with its store one door down — known for its sleeper “mission” shorts and pants, its bibs and jerseys, and for deliberately leaving its logo off the clothing, betting that quiet resonance beats free marketing. Quann has turned down trends he didn’t believe in (the 2015 floral-jersey wave; his answer was the subtly-patterned “Floral or Not”), spun an April Fool’s gag into a real logo-covered jersey sold for less “because you’re doing the marketing for us,” and just shipped a customer-service chatbot built on the brand’s own support tickets. Through the struggle-bus stretches and a stated fear of getting big enough to “break it,” his single filter has never changed: is this something that I want?

  • Starting Ornot in 2013 as a personal design project — clothing was just the first idea, not the plan
  • Choosing US-made cut-and-sew over the easy overseas route — years spent finding a pattern maker, a facility, and a fabric mill in the Bay Area
  • Leaving the logo off the clothing on purpose — the sales it costs vs. the loyalty it wins
  • “Is this something that I want?” as the only product filter — and refusing the 2015 floral-jersey trend
  • The April Fool’s logo jersey that became real — sold for less “because you’re doing the marketing for us”
  • Keeping it “just me size” for two years — writing the cards, packing the bags, and the fear of getting big enough to break it
  • Doing it the hard way as a whole philosophy — from a customer-service chatbot to telling fabric stories at MADE

“I never took the easy way out. I was just kind of like: how do I make this different, and a little bit harder, and a little bit more unique?”

“When I started Ornot, there was at least two years where I was like, I don't want this thing to be any bigger than me. I was still writing the cards, packing the bags, sending them out. I just wanted it to be just me size.”

“The filter has always been: is this something that I want? That's the main filter.”

“I've got this small brand that's working — some people buy the clothing, I make more clothing, and it just kind of works. I don't want to get too big. I don't want to break it.”

“We don't put the logo on our clothing. I can guarantee that if we put the logo on the backs of our jerseys or on the bibs, those people would know about us, for sure. But it's the route we've chosen.”

“We teased it on April Fool's, and then we actually did it. We make a jersey, we put logos all over it, and we sell it for less because you're doing the marketing for us.”

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